Will It Happen Again? (DVD)

Independently produced in 1948 under the aegis of the U.S. Navy Club, WILL IT HAPPEN AGAIN? (The Love Life of Adolph Hitler) is a carefully calculated and beautifully executed takedown of the Third Reich. Footage from Nazi propaganda films (including Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will) is counteracted with images from Nuremberg trials and the liberated death camps, puncturing the myth of the Aryan Herrenmensch, revealing the NSDAP leadership to have been little more than the typical autocrats, drunk on power, frolicking in banal luxury, and enjoying their brief moment of invincibility. Notorious exploitation producer Dwain Esper (Narcotic, Maniac) acquired the film in 1972 and reshaped the judicious anti-fascist treatise into a frothing attack on all 20th-century despots, including Joseph Stalin. In addition to more bombastic narration, CONFORM OR DIE (aka Hitler’s Strange Love Life) is ladled with unhealthy amounts of shocking footage (e.g. the mutilated corpse of Benito Mussolini) to hammer home its anti-authoritarian message.